SOCxAL-lST LITERATURE, TWO VIisWS? An examination of the works of Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf hesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D by Manay Jackson University College London January 1990 ProQuest Number: 10611094 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10611094 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Au St k ACt This thesis examines the work of two writers - Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf - who have been extremely influential in literary developments in the GDR since it was founded in 1949r but who have been very differently received by critics in the East and West, mainly because they are seen to possess different views of socialist literature and its role in a socialist society. This is in spite of the fact that Christa Wolf has often mentioned Anna Seghers as an important influence on her work, and frequently calls upon Anna Seghers’ statements on literature to support her own poetologicai position. The aim of the thesis is to establish the extent to which their contrasting reception is justified by examining the two writers’ views of what constitutes socialist literature, and the similarities and differences between them. The findings are that both Seghers and Wolf have a very similar view of the role that literature has to play in the establishment of a truly socialist society, a role which they see as being linked to literature’s capacity to explore reality and the possibilities open to people, and thus assist them in their quest for personal fulfilment. However, there is an important difference. For whereas Wolf places her art in the service of rhe individual, Seghers frequently chose to place hers in the service of the socialist state. The thesis concludes that whilst the two writers do share a very similar view of the role of literature in socialist society, they are not as similar as Wolf suggests. However, it points out that Seghers' influence was nevertheless crucial in enabling Wolf to break away from the prescriptions of socialist realism and char her significance for Wolf and indeed for a whole generation of younger writers should therefore not be underestimated. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements Page Introduction 1. Socialist Literature in Germany 2. Anna Seghers 3. Christa Wolf 4. Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf - comparison Conclusion Bibliography ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my warmest thanks to Professor Martin Swales and Mrs Joyce Crick for their invaluable help and encouragement in the revision of this thesis. INTRODUCTION Die Frauen hier in diesem Augenblick ais die Vernunft der Geschichte, nicht nur als Solidarisierte, sondern als Liebendef die sich verstehen f zeitiich und rSumlich getrennt. Diese ilberbrtlckende Kraft eines einzigartigen VerstMndnisses macht auch das Besondere der Beziehung Anna Seghers - Christa Wolf aus. Peter Beicken: "Nachfoige, nicht Nachahmung: Zur Beziehung Anna Seghers - Christa Wolf" The sense of personal identification and aesthetic sympathy which permeates Wolf’s essays on Seghers has little basis. While they document Wolf’s progress, what they reveal about Seghers is limited and even distorted. Interesting in their reflection of Wolf’s literary experiencer they hardly serve the cause of authenticity. Colin Smith: "Christa Wolf and Anna Seghers" Two women writers have greatly influenced literary developments in the GDR since its foundation in 1949. They belong to two different generations. The one, whose origins go back to the years of communist opposition during the Weimar Republic, became an establishment figure in the GDR in the 1950s. The other, who made her early reputation under that same new establishment, has become the focus of critical thinking in its later years. The first of the two writers is Anna Seghers, a communist writer who was forced into exile when the National Socialists came to power in 1933 and returned to what was at that time the Soviet Occupied Zone fourteen years later. From then until her death in 1983 she worked hard to assist the establishment of a socialist German state. In 1952 she was elected president of the East German Writers' Union and in this role was particularly influential in determining the course of socialist literature in the GDR, which she furthered as a practising novelist and in numerous essays and speeches of the fifties, sixties and seventies. Her ideas were not without their impact for a younger generation of writers in the GDR, amongst them Christa Wolf, who has since emerged as one of the country's leading writers. Christa Wolf was sixteen when the war ended and, after years of Nazi rule, welcomed the chance for a new beginning offered by the socialist order. In 1949 she became a member of the ruling party, the SED, and in the 1950s, whilst editor of the literary journal Neue Deutsche Literatur, published a number of articles in which, like Anna Seghers, she expressed her belief in socialist realism as the literary method best suited to meet the demands placed on literature by a socialist society. That belief is applied in her first published works, but since the late sixties she has become known rather for her break with the tenets of socialist realism and her introduction into her writing of techniques other than those prescribed and accepted by the cultural bureaucracy. The reception of the works of the two writers in East and West Germany has been very different and to a large extent determined by critics' understanding of the attitude of the two women towards the political and social conditions of their country. In the GDR, Anna Seghers is respected and revered. Her works are regarded as classics of socialist literature and earned her numerous honours during her lifetime. These included the Nationalpreis in 1951, 1959 and 1971, an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena in 1959, the VaterlMndische Verdienstorden in silver in 1954 and in gold in 1960, and the Karl-Marx-Orden in 1965. In the West, however, such successes were regarded as an indication of the extent of her cooperation with a totalitarian government.1 Her best known novel, Das siebte Kreuz, which first appeared in English in the USA in 1942, was published in Munich in 1947 and in the same year she was awarded the Btlchner-Preis; but the establishment of two separate German states and the ensuing Cold War meant that it was some time before any of her other works were published. Indeed, the decision of Sammlung Luchterhand to publish a new edition of Das siebte Kreuz in 1962 met with a great deal of resistance.2 And although the critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki defended the publisher's decision to make Anna Seghers’ work available in the West,3 his own reviews of her post­ war works, in particular Die Entscheidung (1959) and Das 1. See Peter Jokostra’s letter to the editor of Die ivelt (1.8.1962). In: Peter Roos and Friderike J. Hassauer-Roos (Hrsg), Anna Seghers. Materialienbuch, (Darmstadt una Neuwied: 1977), p.11-14. 2. Ibid. 3. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, "Literarischer Schutzwall gegen die DDR - Anna Seghers Werke soilen in der Bundesrepublik erscheinen", Die Zeit. (10.8.1962). In:Roos/HassauerRoos, (1977), p.14-19. Vertrauen (1968), undoubtedly contributed to the accepted view of Anna Seghers as a once great writer who had sacrificed her talent for the sake of a corrupt and inhuman regime.4 As recently as 1970 the wish of an 5PD MP in her native town, Mainz, to grant her the freedom of the city in honour of her seventieth birthday, unleashed a controversy which was not resolved until 1981.3 In recent years the situation has changed somewhat. In the late seventies Sammlung Luchterhana began to bring out individual editions of all of Anna Seghers’ works and a number of articles have appeared offering a more differentiated appreciation of her writing. Nevertheless, only a selection of her essays are, as yet, available and it must be said that due to the many attacks on her work in the fifties and sixties the majority of Anna Seghers’ works are hardly known in the Federal Republic. Christa Wolf, on the other hand, ever since the publication of her novel Nachdenken fiber Christa T. in 1968, has been extremely well-received in the West, partly, perhaps, because the novel was seen to describe the impossiblity of living under a socialist regime.0 The 4. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, "Bankrott einer Erzclhierin. Anna Seghers Das Vertrauen", Die Zeit, (14.3.1969). In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Zur Literatur der DDR (Miinchen: 1974) . 5. Christa Degemann, ”Sie lie(3 sich vom Osten nehmen mit Haut und Haar. Sexualmetaphorik als literaturkritische Kategorie. Anmerkungen zum Umgang mit Anna Seghers in der BRD", Die Horen (4/1983), p.62. 6. Marcel Reich-Ranick, "Eine unruhige Elegie. Christa Wolf: Nachdenken fiber Christa T. " Die Zeit, (23.5.1969). In: Reich-Ranicki (1974), p.118. Sagen wir klar: Christa T. stirbt an der Leukamie, aber sie leidet an der DDR. Was bleibt, ist Kapitulation: Rfickzug in einen windstiiien Winkei works which followed, Kindheitsmuster and Kein Ort. Nirgenas, won her great acclaim and in 1980 she was awarded the BUchner-Preis.